The Autoconf Macro Archive

0.5.57

If you want to contribute ...

then please don't hesitate a second! Just can send the m4 source to Guido Draheim <guidod@gmx.de> via electronic mail, or even send it directly to ac-archive-maintainers@gnu.org which is the mailinglist of the ac-archive maintainers and a joint effort to keep the ac-archive repositories in sync and always up to date. See the section about the contribution format below. (There is no `acinclude` option or versioned tarballs at the GNU ac-archive at the moment but we are working on merging the efforts).

Contribution Format

For one thing - I would appreciate if you could split your macros into one-per-mail, rather than sending me your whole aclocal.m4 file, because this makes the inclusion of the submission into the archive much easier for me. It also allows me to review your macro and send you some hints (if you do not want that, please notify me, I just want to be helpful).

Also, I'd like to ask you to adhere to a few formatting rules in your submissions: Every macro should start with a few comment lines, describing what exactly it tests, what results it does produce and how it may be called by potential users. After the comments, the actual m4 code follows.

In the comments, you should use a few directives to mark special contents, that is interpreted by the perl scripts which convert the m4 input to the HTML page the users will see:

@synopsis

This keyword should be followed by a one-line example, showing how to use the autoconf macro, similar to the synopsis line in the usual Unix man files.

@version

This keyword usually contains the string "$Id$" to have the version automatically maintained by CVS here on the server. You may set it manually, though, if you want to.

@author

You have written the macro, so please say so and state your name and e-mail address after this keyword, so that users may express their gratitude, report problems or suggest enhancements.

Here is an example, how your submission should look like:

dnl @synopsis The syntax how to use the macro.
dnl
dnl A description of what the macro does and what results
dnl it produces.
dnl
dnl This description may extend over multiple paragraphs,
dnl if you like.
dnl
dnl   Every line that is indented by more than one
dnl   blank will be formatted verbatim, so that you
dnl   can include examples in the description.
dnl
dnl @version $Id$
dnl @author Your Name <your@email.address>
dnl
AC_DEFUN([MACRO_NAME],
[...]
])dnl

Macro names should always be quoted in brackets, otherwise Autoconf will break in case a macro definition is (accidently) included multiple times in a configure.in file, as the macro name would be expanded the second time the definition is parsed. Note that autoconf can warn about symbols starting with AC_ or AM_ when it does exist but has not been found. That is a nice trick, however one should rarely start naming macros with the AC_/AM_ prefix since they might coincide with names of macros from future versions from autoconf/automake and which would shadow your own macro then. The AX_ prefix is reserved for the usage in the ac-archive and it will be ensured that only one macro of the different name exists here (and the `acinclude` tool does already recognize this prefix and warns about missing ones). The AX prefix is therefore recommended now.